Sep '23 (edited) • General discussion
Why Popular Study Methods Aren't Getting You Better Grades
Summary:
The Importance of Study Groups:
Studying alone can be challenging and mentally taxing. Studying in a group can make learning more enjoyable and less solitary. When studying in a group, individuals can teach each other, anticipate questions, and solidify their understanding of the topic. This collaborative approach enhances engagement and knowledge retention.
Encoding Information for Long-Term Memory:
Effective learning involves encoding information from short-term memory into long-term memory. Understanding and explaining concepts in your own words, relating them to existing knowledge, and answering queries all help to store the information effectively. By organizing and binding loose pieces of information into logical "chapters" in your memory, you can easily retrieve and understand the material in the long run. Quality encoding is crucial for successful learning, potentially surpassing the need for spaced repetition.
Video Transcript:
It's like when I was in med school, that was
the best time in my life. In pharmacy school,
I struggled because I was this loner wolf, right?
I'm just doing everything by myself.
I'm literally using desire and mental strength
to try and push through, which is
not good for your mental health.
So my question is, how can I incorporate
spaced repetition more into my daily study habits?
That's a good question.
So I think the whole spaced repetition thing, I didn't
know about all this stuff back in kind of high
school, pharmacy school, or even my medical school.
I think it's more of a guide because
you need to think about the overarching principles,
like what are we trying to apply here?
The main thing is how you can study more efficiently.
So previously I used to study like lecture
one, lecture two, lecture three, lecture four.
I think most people do that when they study.
They're like, oh yeah, I need to cover everything.
And then they sit from lecture 1 to lecture 20
and then they study it in order.
I think most people do that.
The main principle is identifying all the knowledge gaps
that you have currently and until when your exams
are and basically spending more time to go through
concepts that you don't understand well.
Hence the whole Knowledge-Based Timetable will give you
a systematic way of going through things, right?
So if you identify lecture 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 are red.
So basically you need to go back to them and
try to actually understand well until you turn them green.
And then later on you want to test yourself again
to make sure that you actually have gotten those principles.
For example, do you have any particular study groups
or are you doing this all by yourself?
On my own at the moment.
So I think that's the hard part,
trying to do this all by yourself.
It's like when I was in med school,
that was the best time in my life.
In pharmacy school, I struggled because
I was this loner wolf, right?
Like I'm just doing everything by myself.
I'm literally using desire and mental strength to try
and push through, which is not good for your
mental health. When you're doing everything by yourself
and sometimes you go through failures, sometimes you drop
off, it's just not good for your mental health.
You're like, why am I doing this?
But then when you are going through with
this with a group of friends, for example,
me in med school, it's really fun.
I look forward to our Saturday morning.
We do three or 4 hours together and then that's it.
And then we go and have lunch and chill afterwards.
But those 3 or 4 hours, we research really
well each, for one or two topics.
That's the ones that you might want to cover.
And then you look forward to that because
you're going to teach the people around you.
So it becomes a source of activity and
then you try to anticipate their questions.
And then so when they ask you questions
they're like oh yeah, actually I researched this.
It becomes like a game where you're able
to know the topic so well that you
can just teach it without any materials.
Then that knowledge becomes yours and
you don't need spaced repetition anymore.
That's at the highest level of learning.
We talked with Zakir previously, he is a master of this.
Basically, people look at him and think that
he's a genius because it's not that way.
It's like how you can reason with your own logic
to make sure that everything that has been presented to
you is making sense to you and your mind.
Once you're able to explain that simply in your
own words, either to yourself, either to chat GPT,
either to a good group of friends like what
I did previously, the overarching principles remain the same.
I feel like to answer your question of spaced
repetition, how to do that the best, it's going
back to how well you're able to encode information
from your short-term memory, which is basically you
trying to read information or trying to consume information
from a lecture, from Khan Academy or from whatever
resource textbook that you have.
In order to store that into long term, you need to
unscramble all of this and relate it to the existing concepts
that you have and able to explain this into your own
words and also answer all the queries that you have yourself
and also what other people might have.
So you're encoding this well into
your library of long-term memory.
Once you do this well, the
process of retrieval is really easy.
Does that kind of make sense?
My analogy is you've got all the sensory information.
It's like these loose pages from all of these books that
you can have a Harry Potter book, page 1 to 1000.
You can have a Lord of the Rings book,
you can have the Atomic Habits book I've got right
here, and all in loose pages.
So your short term memory is trying
to bind these into logical chapters.
What are the common patterns of this?
What are the similarities of this
character is to other people?
So you're trying to bind this and meaningful thing
and bind these loose pages into chapters and eventually
into books into your long term memory.
And once you're able to do this
process, well, then it makes sense.
Once you pull this book off your shelf, you're
like oh yeah, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three.
And then I know it can relate to
other chapters or other books as well.
So I think the key to answering your question
is focusing on your quality of encoding information.
I think literally this overrides
the principle of spaced repetition.
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Why Popular Study Methods Aren't Getting You Better Grades
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